Berkshire firefighters have united with neighbouring fire services and an animal welfare charity to ensure they rescue trapped and injured animals in the safest way possible.

Specialist crews have helped a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig which had its teeth stuck in a conservatory in Wokingham, cows which have swum the River Thames and have been running along the tow path, countless horses in overturned horse boxes on the motorway, two to three hundred sheep causing chaos on the M4 and rescued a giraffe at Longleat Safari Park.

The specialist animal unit is based at Reading’s Caversham Road fire station and firefighters are trained by Hampshire Fire and Rescue service, in conjunction with the Chief Fire Officers’ Association (CFOA) so they can handle any emergency.

Caversham Road station commander Jess James explained there is a lot more to animal rescues than saving cats stuck up trees.

He said: “Animal rescue gets a lot of bad press with the stereotype of the cat stuck up the tree or the well-known image of a duck stuck in the ice.

“There used to be the sort of approach where fire officers would try and do the best they can with what they have.

“Now we are extremely professional and very well qualified and trained but there is a great deal of effort and risk behind large animal rescues.

"We always think if we save the animal we save the life of the human as well, as 83 per cent of humans will take some kind of risk to rescue their animals.”

All of the crew at the fire station receive training which teaches them 80 per cent about animal handling and 20 per cent about animal rescue techniques, including anaesthesia which he acknowledged “can look alarming but is standard practice”.

Station commander James added: “If we go in and mess about we can get ourselves into serious trouble so we undertake safety procedures.

“But in the past the positions we would get ourselves into show how bad an awareness we had of the danger and the consequences of what we were doing.

“We now work very closely with the RSPCA and when we attend a small animal rescue incident they advise us and help us out so we don’t have to deal with it all ourselves.”

Last month crews were called to rescue a shire horse, named Bertha, who had fallen over and was unable to pick herself up.

She was the biggest horse officers have had to deal with.

Crews were forced to anaesthetise her to lift her out of the enclosed area by crane and onto a bed of straw.

They then gave her saline and fluids to counteract the anaesthetic until she was conscious and used strops and a spreader bar to lift her.

The unit from Caversham Road, a heavy rescue unit from Dee Road in Tilehurst and crews from Beaconsfield were called to the incident in Lake End Road in Dorney on November 20.

Addressing animal owners he added: "If your animal needs rescuing don't take the risk, we will come with all our equipment, we know exactly what we are doing.

"We will save the animal and we will prevent anybody hopefully from getting injured or worst case being killed."